"The essay summarizes the authors study Sovereignty, Credible Commitments, and Economic Prosperity on American Indian Reservations, which measures the crippling economic consequences resulting from the lack of private property rights on Indian reserves."

"There are four different but overlapping regimes of private-property rights-customary rights, certificates of possession, land codes under the First Nations Land Management Act, and leases-already exist on reserves across Canada, as do several unique regimes, such as the Sechelt and Nisga'a cases. These various regimes are worthy of serious study by economists, lawyers, and political scientists with a view to establishing how well they work and how they might be perfected for the benefit of First Nations."

"Investing in disadvantaged young people is one of the rare public policies with no equity-efficiency tradeoff. Based on the methodology developed in Sharpe, Arsenault and Lapointe (2007), we estimate the effect of increasing the educational attainment level of Aboriginal Canadians on labour market outcome and output up to 2026. We build on these projection to estimate the potential effect of eliminating educational and social gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people on government spending and government revenues using population and economic projections to 2026."